


para que duermas en paz

by infernum



Series: there’s lessons you learn, bridges you burn [6]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bilingual, Character Death, Character Study, Drug Dealing, F/M, Gang Violence, Gen, Gun Violence, I started on this before I even got the second part of the series posted what the fuckkkkkk, Loss of Innocence, Loss of Parent(s), Minor Character Death, Murder, Non-Explicit Sex, Original Character(s), Pre-Canon, Underage Sex, bitchhhhhhh i am dead inside, no beta we die like men, there are translations provided in the end notes for those who need them, this has taken me nearly a month to finally get to a point where i'm like 'yeah this is postable', warning: there are..... a lot, yeah there's no beth/rio bc it's....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 03:45:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19165165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernum/pseuds/infernum
Summary: Sunt nos patres nostri? Sunt et nos iniquitates eorum, eorum peccata, eorum avaritia?Here is a fact: his abuelita once said that he was born a man for the blood. He knew it then, and he knows it now.She said he would probably die one.This he knows, too.





	para que duermas en paz

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings about Rio, especially about how he was raised and what his family life was like, and how it integrated with the gang life which I can only assume started out young seeing as he's still pretty young in the show. If we're going by Manny's age, he's probably, at the very most, 35 years old, but I hc him to be 29/30 years old. Old enough to have that experience needed to run things in Detroit (and likely in other cities, if he's being truthful about his many other ventures, because I don't see him risking it and piling it all in one city when he could spread his enterprises and minimise the risk of it coming back to him), but not young enough that it doesn't make sense for him to be at the level he is. I have a lot of hc's for Rio so bear with me lmao.
> 
> Yes, I really have been writing this for like a month. I know it's not even 4000 words but I wanted it to lead up to Rio in the show, to make sense of how he is and who he is, what shaped him into what he is today. The beginning drafts didn't do that justice and also I haven't written or even thought in Spanish for like, 4 years? So that took a hot minute as well.
> 
> The title is part of the Spanish lullaby that Rió's mum used to sing to him, _A Dormir_ —it means "so you sleep in peace". The quote in the summary is Latin for "are we our fathers? are we their transgressions, their sins, their greed?" which ties up quite nicely with the Exodus quote regarding children taking on the punishment from their fathers sins.
> 
> All translations are in the end notes. I have limited Spanish vocabulary and can just about make full sentences, but I can put together words to make half of one, so hopefully I haven't butchered the language, but if I have please don't hesitate to let me know in the comments and I will correct it asap!!
> 
> Hope you all enjoy it!!!

  _ **Exodus 34:6-7** : “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no meansclear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”_ 

* * *

Here is a truth: a gun has never been foreign to Rió. The cold press of metal against his palm used to frighten him with how the cold spread through his body, but now it warms up in his hand and he knows— _he knows_ —he is a product of his father.

He is his father’s sins; his greed, his wrath, his pride, his envy.

* * *

_**one.** _

The memory is distorted, confused, from how young he was, but it is the first memory that he knows to be real instead of imagination mixed with bad dreams and real life nightmares.

When he was four years old, after his mamí had up and left when her cousin got shot by one of his papí’s rivals, he had no friends left to talk to. All sus padres whispered words in their kids' ears about who he was, what his papí was, what he and the sindicato had done since he had taken over as lugarteniente, la primera palabra.

Mamí hadn’t been close with her cousin Miguel, but she had left anyway. Papí said this was a betrayal, that she was a chavala, to Los Pecadores, a branch off Cártel del Golfo from where papá was born in Heroica Matamoros. Mamí wasn’t born in their home country but she had moved to Matamoros when she was fifteen with her mother after her own papí had died at the hands of Vatos Locos, so Christópher was born in the heat of June in southern Matamoros, his mamí and papí both just sixteen years old. He couldn’t (and still can’t) remember what it looked like as they moved to Detroit when he was just over a year old.

One of papí’s men, José Antonio, had a boy around his age, Rubén Antonio. Rubén was a year or two older but papí said that he was good to be cómplices with, which meant he had to hang with him even if Rubén scared him just a bit. He would never have told his papí that, though, not unless he wanted to be enseñóla fuerza. Papí and Los Pecadores told the new boys they had to be enseñóla fuerza, and that usually ended with them nursing broken bones and wounds that bled and bled.

Rubén liked to play with his papí’s things when he was out with the other’s in the garden, or when he came around and let Rubén touch the bullets he liked to clean on Christópher’s papí’s dining table in the front room. Sometimes José Antonio would let him look but he never touched; that was reserved for his own hijo, and men had to teach their own by themselves. It was law.

One day, four months after his mamí had gone and three after his papí had told him that betrayal had its own punishment, him and Rubén were left alone in Rubén’s house. It was slightly smaller than his but it was still nice, still had a big T.V. and loads of seats in the garden for the men to take over during the evenings.

Rubén had taken Christópher upstairs where he had never been before, where he wasn’t allowed, but no adults were there and he wanted to see what was so special about the upstairs. Inside José's bedroom it was bland and boring—clothes had been left on the floor, the curtains were drawn shut so it was dark until he had switched on the lights. His hands had frantically searched the wall by the door, still afraid of the dark and los monstruos that hid under beds and in closets. Mamí had told him once, before she disappeared, that he had nothing to fear because los monstruos couldn’t do any harm when el amorde una madre protected niños. His mamí had left and her love went with her; he was left open to los monstrous so he had to be careful, but he never let his papí know. He wanted to stop being so scared of things but papí was too tough, unlike mamí who used to help him count out loud to ten when something scared him, or she would run her fingertips across his eyebrows and sing  _A Dormir_  until he fell asleep.

Rubén had a gun in his hands, pointed at Christópher and that smile on his face that scared him. That smile reminded him of Davíd, his papí’s segunda palabra. Davíd liked to tell him about the boys he had sent to Los Siete Infiernos and how his papí had watched as they cried, and he knew that Rubén had seen some of these because his papí had taught him already. 

The gun Rubén pointed at him had turned around for Christópher to take a hold of, the smile still there, and he didn’t know what to do except take it before Rubén pointed it back at him again. It was heavy and big in his small hands—he could barely keep it held at shoulder level, the metal cold on the palms of his hands and he wanted to drop it, to run downstairs and all the way home. His chest was so tight and his heart thrumming like a patade conejo. His head felt light a cloudy and he could hardly hear what Rubén was saying; it was like he was under water, like when he held himself under the water in the bath and his papí was calling for him, but he sounded so far away that he hardly noticed his voice getting louder and louder.

Without warning, the gun was snatched out his hands and someone turned him around to face José Antonio’s angry face and his papí standing behind him, his face was calm on the outside but Christópher knew there was that fire burning underneath his skin. He couldn’t lose his control in front of his men, even his segunda palabra.

Christópher did not go over to José Antonio’s house again, never saw José again, and Rubén never spoke to him again.

* * *

_**two.** _

On his seventh birthday, the day before a cousin’s quinceañera, his papá brought him into the backroom of the house that Christópher was never allowed in. It was where the big men went in to talk about their work. Christópher wasn’t just a niñito anymore, he was the el siguiente en línea after his papá. Sure, he wasn’t old enough for certain things, but at least he knew  _things_  now. He knew that he knew more than Rubén Antonio would ever know, so the memory of that gun in his face didn’t haunt his dreams—his only nightmares were what he would have to be when his papá passed on la corona to his own head.

The backroom smelt stale and muggy, like there was no air except stagnant smoke and something like copper; it was sharp in his nose, settled heavy on the back of his tongue like the fresh orange juice abuelita made every Saturday afternoon while he did his homework.

He immediately didn’t like it in the backroom despite how much he had wanted to go in there since the door had been left ajar one evening five months before and he heard so much about what papá had planned for la pandilla, how they could rise in the ranks and eventually go back to Matamoros and rule more than just a part of a cold and windy city in la falso tierrade lo libre, as his papá would call it.

He had gotten into some trouble, got a smack around the ear and his papá yelled at him like he yelled at his men sometimes, but he was allowed to watch some T.V. before he went back to bed so it wasn’t that bad. It was worth it. 

That afternoon in the backroom wasn’t worth it, though—it was awful, just as scary as that time with Rubén and the gun, but that time it was his papá handing him one instead. He had taken Christópher’s hand, grabbed it tight in his own, and made him hold the gun in his palm and told him to keep his arm up unless he wanted a smack around the head. He said that García’s aren’t weak and he had to learn before it was too late.

It wasn’t as heavy as Jośe’s gun—maybe because he was a bigger boy, stronger than when he was four years old—but it still made him dizzy to hold it in his hands. It still made his chest tight and his breath stick in his lungs like he had taffy in there, holding it all in until he might have exploded. He might have exploded if it wasn’t for abuelita, his papá’s mamá calling for him from the front door, cheering him a  _feliz cumpleaños_ and papá snatched the gun out of his hands and ushered him out, telling him to keep his mouth shut.

He had two birthday cakes—one chocolate and one he didn’t like as much, with mazapánon the top and it tasted funny—and he got loads of presents and he had a birthday hat on too. When everyone sang feliz cumpleaños, papá just looked at him. He looked scary, like he did when Manuel his segunda palabra whispered bad news in his ear.

When he blew out his candles, he wished he would never have to go in the backroom again.

* * *

_**three.** _

Rió was ten years old when Ángel, his papá, died. He had been shot by a boy haciendo sus huesos in a rival pandilla—no, not even a rival; they were small time and non-existent on Ángel’s radar, but they were something after what they did. That boy was something, too, for a short time. He quickly became nothing not even three days after he had killed papá. It was quick and over before it started, his body thrown half-gutted on the front lawn of his mamá’s house. She screamed, wailed, sobbed, and begged la gracia de Dios for her son back, but he was long gone.

Rió had told Manuel he was going with them, that he wanted to see the man that had ended his papá’s life, but all he could see was a boy only two or three years older than him. He didn’t kill the boy, but he held a gun to his head and made him confess with his lips pressed to su crucifijo.

He breathed easy as the boy cried and his head was clear when the cries stopped. 

* * *

Here is a fact: his abuelita once said that he was born a man for the blood. He knew it then, and he knows it now.

She said he would probably die one.

This he knows too.

* * *

_**four.** _

At twelve years old, Rió hadn’t been called Christópher since Ángel was killed. Abuelita still called him Christópher, but only when it was just them. The rest of la familiadidn’t dare call him that.

Rió was stepping up in Los Pecadores just like they expected it of him. Ángel had left this small part of a kingdom to him and there was little choice otherwise. When the king dies, his next in line takes the bloodied crown and has their place on the throne, whether or notthey wanted it—there’s no choice in la pandilla; choice no longer exists and just becomes kill or be killed. His papá may have died when he was young, but he had taught Rió enough to know that the men will follow him but only if he takes the lead. A rey must show their leadership, show their dedication to their men and la pandilla, through haciendo los huesos de uno. 

Manuel had been whispering in his ear that the men had been talking about him, about how his papá had never shown weakness when it came toweeding out the talkers. Manuel had also been whispering about how two men, two  _halcones_  with no loyalty or blood in the game, were spreading rumours and lies about how Rió can’t keep control of el territorio. That was something that Ángel would have dealt with already, would have paid no mind to as he watched them beg for mercy and receive none as el rey made examples of them; he would have strung their bodies up to show traidores what would happen to them.

Manuel also liked to tell Rió that he could do it for him, if he wanted him to. That, if he wasn’t up for it, he could be his sicario so he wouldn’t have to expose himself to that part of the life.

Manuel liked to talk too much to Rió about what he could and couldn’t do.

His papá didn’t teach him for nothing, so the first time he pulled a trigger with it pointed at a person, it was at Manuel with his own men standing strong behind him. Manuel had begged, just like the niño that killed his papá. It taught Rió that, in the end, everyone is just a kid in and grown-up body—everybody is scared to die but no one thinks about how they will go until it is their time.

Since Manuel was segunda palabra, Rió had to plan who would take it on next.

Alejandro was just eighteen years old but he had taken care of Rió’s abuelita when he was too busy to; he would take care of her laundry on the days her bones ached and he would go to the supermercado that sold vegetales orgánicos that tasted like Matamoros vegetales. Alejandro also handled meetings that he couldn’t attend because abuelita had chemo at City Hospital in New York for a whole week, every day, once a month. When Rió went with abuelita every day for those sessions, Alejandro didn’t say a thing to anyone about why he wasn’t there, just that they should be lucky they were given the time of day at all. Manuel never did this. Manuel was too much like Ángel to realise how important familia was.

So, when Manuel’s beaten and bruised body laid before him, a bullet between his eyes and tears still drying on his cheeks, Rió turned and put both hands on Alejandro’s shoulders and smiled at him. It was all teeth and nothing else.

Alejandro’s first order as segunda palabra was to find the two halcones with big mouths and small brains, and to bring them to Rió when they were ready to grovel and whimper for him. They did grovel and whimper, especially when Rió took his time with them and coaxed out the weakest whines and loudest, hoarsest screams. That was something that Ángel had not taught him. Rió had learnt this from José Antonio eight years ago, from when he had told little baby Christópher what he used to do to men for his papá. That was something Ángel nor José could not take responsibility for because, even though José had told him about what could be done to a man’s body to break him and his papá had moulded him into a man at a young age, it was Rió’s hands that broke those men and it was his own segunda palabra who followed his orders with pride to follow them.

The gun he used to kill Manuel was the same he used to make the boy who killed his papá confess.

It was the same one his papá had made him hold on the afternoon of his seventh birthday.

It was the one he used to beat the two halcones with before shooting them in their stomachs and leaving them to bleed out before throwing their bodies out near Livernois Avenue.

* * *

_**five.** _

Ángel Frañcisco García’s name follows Rió around like a shadow. Sometimes he forgets and the weight of who his papá was and what he meant felt as light as a whisper, but most of the time Rió feels like his back could break under the weight of it. Sometimes he forgets that there's a weight at all, that there's a shadow to begin with and that he's anything less than Ángel’s shadow. Right now, this is all pushed to the back of his head, and he's living like a teenager should instead of all his senses honed in on the threats that surround him.

He's got his two-year crush, Carmen, settled on his lap in the back of his car. His hands are all over her—her waist, her hips, her breasts, her lips, her thighs, her hands—and he can't get enough of her. She's slowly grinding on his lap, driving him insane, sweat gathering at the hollows of his collarbones. Her mouth hovers over his throat and he can feel her heated breath fanning over him. She smells like mint and jasmine, like heaven's descended down on him and he can hardly breathe with how tightly she's pushing herself up against his chest.

Carmen had moved to Detroit two years ago, and no one had heard of her before. Someone mentioned when she first moved that she had a hermano that died five years ago but she never talked about him or her family. Rió knows she lives with her mamí but that woman was half-crazy with a head full of demonios on a good day, so Rió never bothered opening that door in case Carmen turned out to be the same. 

Two years, it's taken; two years of charming her, flirting, trying not to come on too strong. He even studied more in the classes he barely bothered to go to just to get her attention when the teachers sarcastically asked if he even knew what the answers might be after he would scoff at other kids getting shit wrong. Two years, and here he is: Carmen Ruíz sitting on his lap, faintly moaning into his skin, and he's got the biggest hard on he's ever had in his life. He can't wait to go to Alejandro and tell him how he got her begging on his lap. That cabrón's been ripping into him because he couldn’t make a proper move on her after choking on half his words whenever she would acknowledge his existence. If it wasn’t for her, he would’ve given up with school not even a few months after she arrived.

Rió's so wrapped up in  _Carmen Carmen Carmen_ , he can hardly felt the sting of a blade pressed against his throat, exactly where she had her lips pressed not even a second before.

Carmen pulls away from him, keeping the blade pressed just above his Adam’s apple. He can feel the skin there slide open under the pressure of the sharp edge, can feel some blood slide down his neck and pool in the hollows of his collarbones, joining the sweat and her saliva where she had licked up and down his chest to get a taste of him. He can feel his heart race deep in his rib cage, thundering in his torso and screaming _danger!_ , and it's so painful to breathe and his chest is tight. His head is fading into nothingness and it's exactly like when Rubén had brought him up to his papá's room and passed him the gun; it was just like when his own papá had made him hold the gun on his seventh birthday; it was just like when he taught Manuel that he didn’t take too kindly to his men thinking they could control him.

He can faintly hear Carmen sobbing and explanation, that she's sorry but his papá killed her inside, killed her mamí inside, killed their whole damn family on the inside when her hermano was found in front of their house. Rió can't understand what she's saying, how it meant she had to have a knife to his throat when he had just wanted to trust someone that was soft, hopeful and innocent. Words are about to Tumblr off his tongue to ask  _why, how, who?_  when a boy’s petrified face takes over his head and it's all he can see.

That terrified niño he had made confess.

Rió understands, he really does—her rage and need for revenge, for anything other than the searing pain of losing a loved one so violently, was something he understood. He had felt it too, towards her hermano, when he kneeled before him and begged for his life after he had taken his own papá’s. He had felt it before when his mamá had left him all alone with that man. If Rió had that knife to his neck when he was twelve or thirteen, he would have tried to talk to her or reason with her, or explain that he was just a niño scared to get out and he had to adapt to a world he never wanted a part of. If he could, he would leave her there to scream and wail about her brother, but in order to be the king, you’ve got to live. To be the king, you have to survive.

There's a loud, sickening crack and crunch as Carmen's head hits the door window, Rió throwing her to one side to lunge forward to the front passenger seat to open the glove compartment. His hands fumble with the handle, with the hundreds of papers and CDs strewn about in the compartment, with the safety on the gun he always keeps there for a just in case. He hears the leather of the seats creak behind him as she sits up and sluggishly, dizzily, leans forward towawards him and starts to howl her brother’s name ( _Carlos Carlos Carlos Carlos Carlos Carlos_ ), and Rió turns in the seat to point the gun directly at her heart.

Carmen freezes, her eyes wide and pulls blown across her irises, eyes black with a hellfire behind them instead of the colourful and mesmerising hazel they usually were. Her arm is raised with the blade pointing downwards, ready to strike. Rió can see blood on her temple from where he threw her aside.

Rió has never hurt a girl before. His papá hurt girls all the time.

“My heart is broken. Carlos is gone and my heart is broken.”

“I know.” He pulls the hammer down, aims. “I’m sorry.”

He pulls the trigger.

* * *

Here is an inevitability: one day, he will be just like papá.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you guys think!! Criticism is accepted but only if it's constructive. I accept any and all types of praise because I am a major slut for praise.
> 
> —————————————————————————————————
> 
> 1\. Matamoros is a city in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. It is officially known as Heroica Matamoros. It is located on the southern bank of the Rio Grande, directly across the border from Brownsville, Texas, in the United States. Matamoros is the second largest city in the state of Tamaulipas.
> 
> 2\. Cártel del Golfo, also known as Gulf Cartel, is a criminal syndicate and drug trafficking organization in Mexico, and one of the oldest organised crime groups in the country. It is based, and was founded, in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, during the 1930s.
> 
> 3\. Los Pecadores is an offshoot from C.D.G. but is not based in Detroit in real life, or anywhere real life. Los Pecadores are loosely based on an offshoot in the U.S. but not specifically based on any single one.
> 
> 4\. Vatos Locos is a street gang. While more traditionally considered to have originated in Guanajuato, Mexico, the two founding members originally concocted the Vatos Locos while dining in Santa Monica, California. The gang was founded in the 1950s. Vatos Locos are known rivals of Cártel del Golfo.
> 
> 5\. Drug lords (Capos): This is the highest position in any drug cartel; they are responsible supervising the entire drug industry, appointing territorial leaders, making alliances, and planning high-profile executions.  
> \-- Lieutenants (Lugartenientes): The second highest position in the drug cartel organization; they are responsible for supervising the sicarios and halcones within their own territory. They are allowed to carry low-profile executions without permission from their bosses. (this is partially included in the translations)  
> \- Hitmen (Sicarios): They are the armed group within the drug cartel; they are responsible for carrying out assassinations, kidnappings, thefts, extortions, operating protection rackets, and defending their plaza from the rival groups and the military.  
> \- Falcons (Halcones): Considered the "eyes and ears" of the streets, the falcons are the lowest rank position in any drug cartel. They are responsible for supervising and reporting on the activities of the Mexican military and of their rival groups.
> 
> —————————————————————————————————
> 
> Please note that I tried to match the slang/words typically used in the northeast region of Mexico. If I got any parts wrong, don't hesitate to let me know.
> 
> ‣ _Papí_ : daddy  
> ‣ _Papá_ : father  
> ‣ _Mamí_ : mommy  
> ‣ _Mamá_ : mother  
> ‣ _Sindicato_ : [crime/gang] syndicate  
> ‣ _[La] pandilla_ : [the] gang  
> ‣ _Lugartenientes_ : lieutenants (second highest position in the whole organisation—responsible for supervising the sicarios and halcones within their own territory)  
> ‣ _Primera palabra_ : first word (first in command)  
> ‣ _Segunda palabra_ : second word (second in command)  
> ‣ _Sus padres_ : their parents  
> ‣ _Chavala_ : often used to describe those who desert their gang or members of rival gangs (direct translation: child; punk; immature person)  
> ‣ _Cómplices_ : Partners in crime (partner/accomplice)  
> ‣ _Enseñó la fuerza_ : taught [the] strength  
> ‣ _Hijo_ : son  
> ‣ _El amor de una madre_ : the love of a mother  
> ‣ _Niños_ : children  
> ‣ _Los monstrous_ : the monsters  
> ‣ _A Dormir_ : a Spanish lullaby  
> ‣ _Los siete infiernos_ : The Seven Hells  
> ‣ _Pata de conejo_ : rabbit's foot  
> ‣ _El siguiente en línea_ : the next in line  
> ‣ _La corona_ : the crown  
> ‣ _La falso tierra de lo libre_ : the false land of the free  
> ‣ _Mazapán_ : marzipan  
> ‣ _Haciendo sus huesos_ : making his bones  
> ‣ _La gracia de Dios_ : the grace of God  
> ‣ _Su crucifijo_ : his crucifix  
> ‣ _La familia_ : the family  
> ‣ _Rey_ : King  
> ‣n _Haciendo los huesos de uno_ : making one's bones  
> ‣ _El territorio_ : the territory  
> ‣ _Traidores_ : traitors  
> ‣ _Sicario_ : hitman  
> ‣ _Supermercardo_ : supermarket  
> ‣ _Vegetales orgánicos_ : organic vegetables  
> ‣ _Quimioterapia_ : chemotherapy  
> ‣ _Los capos_ : the [drug lords] capos (no specific translation for capos)  
> ‣ _Demonios_ : demons  
> ‣ _Cabrón_ : bastard  
> ‣ _Hermano mayor_ : older brother  
> ‣ _Suyo casa_ : their house  
> 


End file.
